Increase Available RAM and Speed Up Your
PC, all with one, easy-to-use package
It's
easy to recommend packages, but these carry no weight unless they
are backed by investigation and a proper review. To that end, we've
purchased, installed and used RAMrocket ourselves on computers used
here in the Redlaw offices.
 Purchasing
online as you would expect these days is easy and download of
the RAMrocket software is instantly available as soon as your credit
or debit card details have cleared. Much sure you take note of the
serial number etc when these are shown on the screen - you'll need
these to activate the software and in case there are any future
queries.
We
timed the installation of the RAMrocket
software on our equipment and it took only 45 seconds from start
to finish, the total hard disk space taken up being 4.3Mb. At this
point you have a fully working package that will do it's job freeing
up RAM whenever it's needed. However, I recommend taking a few minutes
just to tweak one or two things on the Options tab which will make
life even better such as selecting to have RAMrocket load up automatically
when you start your PC and telling it at what level of RAM it should
start to look to freeing up more. Here follows the details of our
tests.
Did
We Really Get More RAM Freed Up?
1.
Laptop Installation with 128Mb RAM
Our first installation was on a laptop fitted
with 128Mb RAM. At this point RAMrocket showed us we had just 40Mb
(31%) of free RAM after loading Windows. (Note that we have a firewall,
anti-virus software and other applications running in the system
tray so your results may vary from ours). Not exactly swimming in
free RAM, it's no wonder we sometimes had problems running applications
that needed a fair amount of memory!
Release
RAM Test
To
give RAMrocket a thorough testing, we loaded Internet Explorer,
Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook and Macromedia's DreamWeaver at
the same time. As each loaded, RAMrocket showed us reducing memory
until we only had 12Mb RAM left. During this test we set RAMrocket
up so that it didn't take any action as normally it would have tried
to free up more memory for us!
Clearly,
running a few applications at the same time uses up RAM pretty fast,
something that many people don't realise. (In fact even running
one application at a time doesn't help. It's well established that
Windows doesn't release RAM properly after shutting the application
down, so each time you start a new application, or even the same
one again, you'll lose a bit more RAM each time until you run out)!
RAMrocket
is specifically designed to make sure you have as much RAM made
available to you as sensibly possible in a simple and swift fashion.
In the example above where we only had 12Mb left, after we shut
all the programs down, RAMrocket made sure it clawed back all the
RAM previously used and we got our original 40Mb RAM back. So RAMrocket
passed this test admirably by making the PC released memory properly
so it was available again.
Keep
RAM Test
As
I said above, we set up RAMrocket in the above test specifically
so that it didn't actively seek more RAM as it would have done in
normal circumstances. In this next test we let it do what it is
designed to do, keeping hold of RAM where-ever it can.
The
default setting after installation (in our case) was that RAMrocket
would actively seek to release memory if the amount of free RAM
dropped below 36Mb. So we repeated the above test, loading all the
applications at the same time but this time with RAMrocket's automatic
RAM-release function switched on and set at 36Mb. This time, instead
of gradually losing RAM as each program loaded (leaving us with
only 12Mb), we kept exactly 36Mb throughout the entire test. This
is exactly what we expected of it, so again, full marks on this
test.
[Interestingly,
when we closed all the programs down afterwards, RAMrocket freed
up even more RAM than we started with!]
Grab
More RAM test
In
our final test we checked out RAMrocket's capability of freeing
up more RAM when you ask for it. There's two ways of doing this.
The first is to click the 'Release RAM' button in the Main window
(shown below)
In
our setup this will try to release more RAM to make the total of
60Mb that you can see we've requested in the 'Desired Free RAM'
section in the picture above. This works fine when you don't have
any applications loaded and we easily achieved our objective. When
you have applications loaded however, you should note that you won't
always achieve this. It stands to reason that you can't infinitely
claw back RAM from applications, but you will get some memory
released.
Having
said that however, if you click on the 'Free All RAM' button, RAMrocket
will give you as much memory as it can find. In our example it freed
up a total of 82 Mb! That's an astounding amount of RAM to find
as I know from experience that Windows can suck up so much memory.
I was pretty impressed with that performance.
General
Running Test
Behind
these options there is a scheduled activity that is set to recover
RAM every 60 minutes by default, although you can set it to whatever
period you like, whilst you are working. I never realised until
we did these tests, that more and more RAM gets used up even when
you are working within one package. RAMrocket can show you
the history of RAM that it automatically released for you and when
I looked at this for the first time, I noticed that over a 4 hour
period when I was only working in one package, that RAMrocket released
9Mb, 7Mb, 7Mb and 14Mb after 1, 2, 3 and 4 hours use respectively.
That's a total of 37Mb it found for me quietly! Amazing! So RAMrocket
is actively looking after you even whilst you are working and oblivious
to what's going on behind the scenes.
2.
Desktop Installation with 512Mb RAM
Our
second test involved one of our office desktops fitted with 512Mb
of RAM. It seems a bit superfluous using it on such a machine but
I was keen to try it out in all situations.
Installation
was exactly the same and just as easy and quick. Out of our 512Mb,
Windows left us with 328Mb (64%) according to RAMrocket. Boy, is
Windows XP Pro ever-hungry! Maybe I'll really need RAMrocket here!
Release
RAM Test
Since
I'm working on a more powerful machine, I've decided to load up
9 programs at the same time for this test. I used Macromedia's DreamWeaver,
Internet Explorer (twice), Microsoft Outlook, Windows Media Player,
Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, QuickBooks, PhotoShop, Macromedia's
FireWorks and Microsoft FrontPage. Our 328Mb is soon whittled down
to 154Mb of memory and all seem to be running OK. Shutting them
all down RAMrocket once again made sure we got all our original
amount of memory back. No problems there.
Keep
RAM Test
Again,
as with the laptop test, once we reached the threshold set, RAMrocket
actively kept our required level of RAM which in our case was set
to 256Mb.
Grab
More RAM Test
On
this occasion we chose to 'Release RAM' whilst the 9 applications
were still loaded. The results were that our 154Mb of RAM became
172Mb which was quite respectable given the load the RAM was under.
Selecting
'Free All RAM' however was quite different. We got a stunning 200Mb
released giving a total of 372Mb free with all 9 applications still
loaded! That's more RAM than what we actually started with, without
anything loaded! I don't recommend doing this however, as I think
there was more reliance on virtual RAM which was slightly slowing
up applications. It's not likely to happen in most cases since I
can't see the need to run 9 high-overhead applications all at once!
The amount of RAM freed up was nevertheless very impressive and
the package still performed perfectly.
After
shutting all programs down, RAMrocket gave me even more RAM as before
with our laptop test and we got 394Mb free at the end.
Games
Test
As
a final test on the desktop, we loaded up just-released games to
see what sort of overhead they demanded in terms of RAM. Of those
we ran, a whopping 50Mb to 70Mb was consumed whilst running. This
clearly shows high demands made by games and the need for as much
free RAM as possible.
3.
Conclusion
There's
nothing complicated about this package, and it does its job extremely
well and efficiently. If you have any kind of desktop or laptop,
especially older models, you'll find RAMrocket extremely useful.
Even those with meatier RAM fitted will find this utility helpful
to keep your machine running smoothly and in peak condition at all
times.
It's
claimed this type of software will reduce crashes. It's not something
we can comment on other than we certainly never experienced a crash
(and we've been using RAMrocket for some time). If the software
is keeping RAM tidy, freeing it and defragmenting (defragging) it
when it can, then that should certainly reduce the risk of crashes.
Crashes usually occur when RAM fills up and you get RAM clashes.
So stopping the latter should stop the crashes occurring.
For
games users, I'd say this is an essential package, even those gamers
like us who have 512Mb or more RAM fitted, I'd still recommend using
RAMrocket. It's an extremely small investment to make and you don't
need to upgrade the software if you change your hardware or even
the PC. There's nothing worse than crashing out of an unsaved game
or having a game run slowly. This costs less than any game I've
bought in the last couple of years.
For
all other users, this is an essential package too. The cost is minimal
to keep your packages running smoothly and as fast as possible as
well as allowing you to run more than one application at the same
time without difficulty.
Apart
from anti-virus software and firewalls, it's the one utility we've
run in the Redlaw offices for several years because of the benefits
gained.
The
software is designed to work on any computer running windows 95,
98, ME, 2000 or XP. You can buy the software wherever you live in
the world and it will be on your computer in minutes.
Since you'll be paying by card, payment will be in your local currency
although you'll see the software priced in U.S. Dollars. The cost
is only $29.95 (click here for currency
conversion if you need it) and is well worth the pennies.
Click
here to increase available RAM and speed up software today
P.S. - There are
other packages that we recommend. Effectively they speed up every
other aspect of your computing experience from disk drive to downloading.
Check these out below.
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